Science

The Pirate Bay defendant appeals to Swedish Supreme Court

Carl Lundstrom lost the earlier appeals trial, and has been ordered to pay 5.1 million euros. His attorney argues that the issue of ISP liability should remain the key issue in the case.

The Pirate Bay defendants lost the appeal in November

Carl Lundstrom, one of the four defendants in The Pirate Bay website trial, has formally appealed to the Swedish Supreme Court against the denial of the party's previous appeal in late November. He is one of the founders of The Pirate Bay - a website that provides links to BitTorrent files that can be used to share unauthorized copies of films, music files and software.

In an interview with Sveriges Radio's P3 news program, Lundstrom's attorney, Per E Samuelsson, said that his client does not accept the sentence of four months of jail time for himself, and a collective fine for him and the three other defendants of 46 million Swedish kronor (5.1 million euros). The four had been previously found guilty of copyright infringement.

However, members of the defense argued that the site, which began in 2003, does not actually host any copyrighted material, but rather provides links to those files.

"We do not accept the Appeal Court's ruling," Samuelsson told Swedish public radio.

"My client Carl Lundstrom delivered Internet capacity to The Pirate Bay," he added. "Different people around the world use the Pirate Bay services. We think it is completely wrong that someone who delivered power to a website should pay damages and sit in prison for what users of the website do with it."

Peter Sunde is another of The Pirate Bay's defendants

ISP liability should be the "target key precedent"

Lundstrom, through his company Rix Telecom, is implicated by having provided computers, bandwidth and server rackspace for the site in the early years after its founding.

In an interview with the Swedish business newspaper Realtid.se, Samuelsson further argued that because his client was providing bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, that therefore Rix Telecom was also its Internet service provider, or ISP.

"Assessing the criminal responsibility of ISPs should be the target key precedent in this case," he said, pointing out that to his knowledge, up until now, no one in Sweden has ever been found guilty on this basis.